This invention relates to irrigation apparatus and more particularly to apparatus which is adapted to traverse a field of growing crops with minimal injury to the crops while dispensing an adequate quantity of water.
The best know prior art utilizes a tractor for pulling a hose or the tractor is used to pull a hose-carrying trailer. The hose is usually a high pressure type and is very heavy and bulky so as the field gets wet, the equipment becomes mired in the field of mud and is difficult to transport, particularly when the hose coiled on a drum is full of water.
My prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,974,876 and 2,718,433 alleviate some of the problems of hose transport. The earlier patent discloses a ditch or terrace channel which is filled with water from one end and a boomcarrying irrigator runs along the ditch and pumps the water into the boom. A short piece of plastic or canvass is dragged behind the tractor forming a moving dam behind which the water is pumped. The later patent uses a strip of plastic which is carried flat on a drum from a tractor and is zippered as it unwinds to form a low-pressure water holding tube from which the water is drawn by a pump and discharged through nozzles and the like carried by the tractor.